We decided that putting head enchants on the various faction vendors wasn't working well with our design intent for the factions. There is a lot of max-level quest content in MoP, much of it focused around the reputation with the new factions. I think it's really cool stuff -- worlds away from the old Argent Dawn scourge stone days.

In previous expansions, the head enchants on the faction vendors served to force players into that content. You couldn't even choose which reputation to pursue -- you had to pursue the one with your specific head enchant. Our design intent for MoP is to give players options in how to play, and the head enchant design wasn't compatible with that.

Once we decided to no longer offer new head enchants, we made the older ones non-functional or else players would feel like they had to go back to older content or be missing out on power. This way, helmets are just no longer enchantable and you'll have one less required step to get a piece of loot ready to wear.

Shoulder enchants can now be provided by scribes, so those still exist, but they are also not part of the faction reputation system.

Priest Skill Animations Preview
Today we continue with the Priest's new skill animations!

Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.2.9858 Coming Soon
WoW news is still pretty slow and most of the CM activity is still focused on Diablo 3, for now we have datamined notes of the upcoming patch 1.0.2.9858

Mantra of Healing Cost: 50 Spirit / Recite a Mantra that causes you and your allies within 40 yards to gain increased Life regeneration by 310 Life per second. The Mantra lasts 3 minutes. / For 3 seconds after activation, Mantra of Healing shrouds you and your allies with a mystical shield that absorbs up to 930 damage. (Changed from Increasing the effect by 1240.4 Life per second)

Boon of Inspiration : (was Boon of Protection) has been fully changed. Now also heals for 186 life when hitting an enemy (Changed from - Mantra of Healing shrouds you and your allies with a mystical shield for 2 seconds that absorbs up to 15% of each target's maximum Life)

Diablo 3 Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Session Spoofing
We've investigated several reports of "session spoofing," as reported both in these forums and elsewhere on the internet. We treat these kinds of reports very seriously; however, to date, we have yet to identify a single case of compromise which was the result of a player joining or participating in a public game.

Additionally, we've looked into the issue and found no evidence to indicate compromises are occurring in this fashion, and we've determined the methods being suggested to do so are technically impossible.

Even so, we're continuing to investigate related reports. If you have evidence which supports your claim that such reports are "100% true," then please relay that information to our support representatives. If you're just spreading hearsay, however...well, that's just not cool. Spinning the rumor mill isn't helping the community, it's only making it dizzy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forum)

Auction House Error 31073
Players will sometimes receive "Error 31073" when attempting to create a new auction. This is an intentional measure to help improve auction house stability by throttling the number of auctions that can be created at any given time. To that end we plan on updating the messaging that accompanies this error in a future patch to better describe why players are receiving it. If you receive this error message when attempting to list an auction you should wait a few moments and try again. While we understand this is an inconvenience, our goal is to ensure a more stable auction house experience for everyone. (Blue Tracker / Official Forum)

@Anyone complaining about D3 news: You also have to realize that we have pretty much no WoW content because Blizzard is also focusing on D3. If you check our blue tracker, you can see that we don't really get official updates or anything and it's pretty hard to fill the front page every day of the week with new content.

At this point, our Diablo 3 forums are more active than our WoW general forums.

Are we going to be seeing a beta patch soon? it matters not, removing head enchants is odd to me, why not remove them from rep reward and gift them to a profession that could do with some much needed income, for example engineering?

Why get rid of the helm enchants? They are just making this game more and more simple by the day. If anything, just reduce it down to one faction like shoulders and be done. It isn't hard to get rep anymore anyway. Get to friendly...buy tabard...hey look exalted. The days when this game actually had depth and required people to think and earn things.

Also this IS MMO Champion... Its not WoW only. Even if D3 is also from Blizzard it's fitting for more than just WoW news to appear on the main page.

Originally Posted by chaud

Here is your answer, direct from the top!

While I understand his reasoning, I do think it would be appropriate to split it into a Diablo news update and a WoW update. And some option to hide the Diablo ones would be nice. While I'm playing and like the game a lot, I really think this a WoW site. Diablofans exists if I want MMOchamp-style data on the D3.

Auction House Error 31073
Players will sometimes receive "Error 31073" when attempting to create a new auction. This is an intentional measure to help improve auction house stability by throttling the number of auctions that can be created at any given time. To that end we plan on updating the messaging that accompanies this error in a future patch to better describe why players are receiving it. If you receive this error message when attempting to list an auction you should wait a few moments and try again. While we understand this is an inconvenience, our goal is to ensure a more stable auction house experience for everyone. (Blue Tracker / Official Forum)

Why get rid of the helm enchants? They are just making this game more and more simple by the day. If anything, just reduce it down to one faction like shoulders and be done. It isn't hard to get rep anymore anyway. Get to friendly...buy tabard...hey look exalted. The days when this game actually had depth and required people to think and earn things.

It's not about simple - it's about boring. No one got anything out of grinding one particular faction on a toon after the first patch. It was a boring prerequisite. It added nothing to the depth of play, it just stretched the whole thing out.

My most recent toon I had ready for Raid Finder in a day. Yet I still had to spend two weeks doing dungeons just to get the helm enchant. It was boring. It didn't help anything. And it didn't make my toon more powerful, it just got it up to speed with everyone else.

ha, that's not even the worst of it. I am pretty confident after thorough testing the throttle is by ilvl. I believe the higher the ilvl the lower in queue (and higher chance of failure) you have. I can almost certainly without a doubt sell a crappy item with no problem, second i start trying to unload inferno stuff, failure 100% of time without fail. It definitely seems to be tied to items, if it's not ilvl then it's some other type of item based priority filter server is doing as a throttle.

What gets me is, to improve the quality of service, they are denying service. Personally i think it was betty when it was lagging and timed out from time to time. VS not laggy but not able to sell about 90% of your items. sigh.

It's not about simple - it's about boring. No one got anything out of grinding one particular faction on a toon after the first patch. It was a boring prerequisite. It added nothing to the depth of play, it just stretched the whole thing out.

My most recent toon I had ready for Raid Finder in a day. Yet I still had to spend two weeks doing dungeons just to get the helm enchant. It was boring. It didn't help anything. And it didn't make my toon more powerful, it just got it up to speed with everyone else.

That isn't fun. And if it isn't fun, why should it be kept?

You do realize that the helm enchants are boa and once you are exhalted with said factions you can just send alts the enchants from that toon right? Also it boggles why they havent made the shoulder enchants boa yet. It didnt take them this long to do it in wotlk.

It's not about simple - it's about boring. No one got anything out of grinding one particular faction on a toon after the first patch. It was a boring prerequisite. It added nothing to the depth of play, it just stretched the whole thing out.

My most recent toon I had ready for Raid Finder in a day. Yet I still had to spend two weeks doing dungeons just to get the helm enchant. It was boring. It didn't help anything. And it didn't make my toon more powerful, it just got it up to speed with everyone else.

That isn't fun. And if it isn't fun, why should it be kept?

"My most recent toon was raid ready in a day. Yet I still had to spend time doing raids/dungeons just to get attuned. It was boring..." See where I'm going with this?

I'm not bashing taking out head enchants, but we have to remember what makes WoW the MMO it is. Take out all of the grindfests and what are you really left with? That's when people will start complaining about being bored, because they have nothing that takes time to accomplish anymore.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.-George Bernard Shaw

You do realize that the helm enchants are boa and once you are exhalted with said factions you can just send alts the enchants from that toon right? Also it boggles why they havent made the shoulder enchants boa yet. It didnt take them this long to do it in wotlk.

Because then it is just an annoyance logging onto another alt and mail them.

Top to bottom, it's leveling a faction you don't care much about simply for access to something that only makes you even with everyone else.

Ugh, taking any grind out of the game. Some of us still like to feel a reward for a grind. Apparently, if everyone can't do everything with 5 spare minutes in the day, then it doesn't fit into the new model. So much for working at your toon to improve it.

Ugh, taking any grind out of the game. Some of us still like to feel a reward for a grind. Apparently, if everyone can't do everything with 5 spare minutes in the day, then it doesn't fit into the new model. So much for working at your toon to improve it.

There's going to be plenty of rewarding of players who enjoy grinding.

I like the idea of removing head entchants as a faction reward, maybe they're gonna do that for shoulders too. however, they dont have to go completely out of the game, why not make a recipe for enchanters or another profession?!

on a side note I think the reason behind this "we removed it because you werent able to choose which factions reputation you grind for the enchant" is kinda pointless?! when cata came out you needed something from every new faction so technically it didnt even matter which faction you grinded. I actually found that quite funny because you couldnt know which part of your gear will drop first from raids but you would swap the grinding depending on what items you get.
well, I guess even with the head enchants gone there will probably be something that everyone needs from every faction just to get started with raiding.